It’s a pretty sad day in our country when yesterday the United States Senate, during an endless “depression”, in the words of economist Paul Krugman, refused even to vote on a bill to end the huge tax breaks for all those American and Multinational Corporations shipping American jobs overseas to China, the Philippines, India, Cambodia et al, where workers are paid pennies an hour. Although 56 Senators voted to end the filibuster debate preventing the bill from coming to the floor for a vote, 44 Senators were enough to sustain it. Whatever happened to the concept, the majority rules?!
Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow was somewhat flabbergasted that her Bill, the Bring Jobs Home Act, was filibustered to death by a super minority of 44 Senate Republicans (only 2 Republicans from Maine and Scott Brown voted to end the filibuster) since the passage of the bill would have allowed tax breaks for Corporations, including a 20% tax credit, for bringing jobs and manufacturing facilities back to America and simply would have ended the tax deductions for Corporations for costs of building plants and moving machinery and operations overseas.
Do you know the reason given by the Republicans who thwarted the passage of this Act? They said it would have complicated our tax code. LOL! As if it is not so full of loopholes for the rich already that it looks more like Swiss cheese than a rational and systematic piece of legislation.
This was a very modest bill. A more just bill would have required the renegotiation of all of our unfair trade treaties, replacing them with fair trade treaties that provided for a level playing field, including the imposition of minimum wages comparable to those here in our country.
But if the Senate won’t even vote against ending these tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, what hope is there of us ever getting fairer trade treaties, especially with the trans-pacific trade treaties now secretly being negotiated behind closed doors to the American public. Why, may I ask you, are they being negotiated in secret? Isn’t this supposed to be a free and transparent government? And why didn’t President Obama use the bully pulpit to rally public support for this Act?
Imagine what John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, or Patrick Henry would say about our government if they were alive today? Didn’t our forefathers fight a revolution over unfair taxation? Except for the US Chamber of Commerce and the 1% and their paid spokesmen, I suspect that virtually all Americans are in favor of ending these tax breaks for shipping our jobs overseas. Isn’t this unfair taxation not representing the will of the majority of Americans?
Would our forefathers put up with this kind of unfair tax legislation time and time again? Would they tolerate this obvious collusion of government with its political donors: the wealthy interests of our nation? Or would they pick up their muskets and fight a revolution over such unfair tax legislation.
If our Congress and Presidents are all bought and paid for by the rich, and if our government has become a government of the rich, for the rich, and by the rich, then where is the outcry and the outrage from the American people? Do you hear it? I don’t.
Did you hear any of the major media report on the defeat of this Act last night? Or did you hear about some comic getting arrested in a porn theater for playing with his thing tonight? Doesn’t Snookie get more coverage on the news than these transgressions against our democracy? Is it news that we get from the six major media owned by Corporate America, or propaganda and drivel?
I am disgusted not only with our government, but with the American people for being so stupid, so lazy, so gullible, and so complacent about the tyranny in our country today. Can’t we all draw a line in the sand and say, “enough”? Or are we destined to continue our slide into more and more poverty and tyranny? If the citizens of Egypt, Libya, and Syria can draw the line in the sand and say enough, why can’t we?
I don’t get it. I must have smoked too much weed in my youth.
For an unofficial transcript of the interview of Senator Bernie Sanders by Eliot Spitzer on the defeat of the Bring Jobs Home Act, please see, Senate Republicans prevent passage of the Bring Jobs Home Act to end tax breaks for corporations for outsourcing jobs overseas!